On the list of movies being released this week is The Conjuring: Last Rites, which is notable for a bunch of reasons, but most importantly it got me thinking for this weeks prompt topic. This past October I was doing my cheesy pun named annual horror marathon (Octobhorror) and I chose the first movie in The Conjuring franchise, aptly titled: The Conjuring. Someone watching The Conjuring is not readily notable, it was popular enough to spawn a franchise of movies, a spinoff franchise, prequel and most importantly to Hollywood types (and the reason for so many of the aforementioned movies) it pulled in a large amount of box office returns on relatively small budgets. Despite all of this, until fairly recently I still had not seen a Conjuring movie. So I finally used the excuse of seasonal viewing to watch it and actually did enjoy it a lot. It threads a few needles well and is an all around effective horror movie while still being entertaining and even a good dash of cheesy fun.

There are so many big franchises, big movies, classics and so on out there it is impossible to see everything, even for a movie buff such as myself. Inevitably I am going to miss things, and I have. Some of them I did not have access to watch (particularly the classics) or at the very least it is not feasible to watch, while others I may have skipped on purpose based on any number of reasons. A lot of the times when I skip movies it is because my lifemate movie partner (Mrs. Fistcrush) is less into things like horror so I pass in order to watch other movies with her, and don’t come back around to seeing the original movie until usually much later. At the end of the day you cannot watch everything, but it can be a real special experience when you finally do come to something even if it is very late to the party and most others have moved on. Sometimes those classics or big franchise movies actually live up to the hype and entertain you greatly and you will be very glad to have come around and watched it. There is also accounting for the time of your life when you watch something. If I had to of watched “The Godfather” when I was 10 it would have had much less impact on me then seeing it about 10ish years later. In cases such as that being late to the party will greatly increase your odds to enjoying a movie you otherwise would not have been ready for.

In either event it is not important when you see a good film, but more that you enjoyed a viewing experience. You may have missed out on some discussion with regards to movies in question, but on the plus side you are shielded from that and can add your own opinions now. In finding this thing you enjoyed far after it was released you are in essence late to that party, and everything being said this week’s prompt is simple: What is your favourite movie viewing where you were ‘late to the party’ or viewed far after the initial release/craze? For me is was super late to a super well received classic: Casablanca. Despite pushing 50 I only saw this for the first time about a year ago. It was immediately clear to me why this was such a classic, acting dialogue, story, music, writing, everything 10/10, no notes and yes it surpassed any hype that had been built up around it. Seeing Casablanca late made me realize what I was missing and now I look for viewings of other classics I have not seen as a result.